You and Tequila
by Diane Langley
Summary: They were fighting one addiction and embracing another, living life through a drunken haze, but a couple cannot be undefined forever. Draco/Astoria. Oneshot, based on the song of the same name.


**AN: **This is an unusual little piece, in addition to being my first Draco/Astoria. This idea is simply one take on how this relationship could work, how they could feel, how they could have happened. I hope you like it. So please read and drop me a review so I know what you think.

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"I think we should get married," she whispered huskily to her pillow. The blinds were shut, but just enough light slipped through the cracks to make her head ache. She pressed her face further into the pillow and tried to wiggle her toes. The act sent sharp pains up through her legs, numb from lying completely immobile for the last eight hours. She had no memory of ending up here after the bar, but she recognized the sheets by feel. It was another night of stumbling in, probably laughing and blowing air kisses, and now it was another morning of aching and regretting next to the man who caused it all.

Except that she suddenly suspected he was not there. She pushed her leg sideways and felt no warm rush of skin. He was gone. The hangover that left her paralyzed and whispering proposals suddenly seemed infinitely more pathetic. She tried to move, but the thudding of blood flowing through her body was so loud it made her want to cry, so she rolled over to simply sleep it off. When she awoke next, only fifteen minutes seemed to have passed, according to the clock on the wall, but it felt like much more. Time was ticking by sluggishly, and she wondered how much longer until he returned. It was his truly flat, but Draco Malfoy had a way of surprising her. More like a million ways of surprising her, most of them inconceivable to her before she met him.

The creak of feet on the floorboards alerted her suddenly. She shifted, preparing to get up to investigate the creaking, and discovered she was only wearing a twisted pair of panties and one sock. Taking the sheet in her arms, she carried it with her as a cover as she stumbled her way into the kitchen, already knowing what she would see. The man of her dreams and nightmares had returned. He was dressed in khaki slacks and a green sweater, layered over an undershirt that she knew had a tear in it from last night, but he was barefoot and holding a cup of coffee. The mix of put together and pulled apart made her chest ache.

"Astoria," he said her name like a greeting instead of an identifier. She chose not to reply, dragging her blanket over to the counter and picking up the second cup of coffee he had already poured. The acrid taste made her swallow slowly, nose wrinkling.

"The blend is new. Australian, I believe. Strong." His monosyllables revealed his hangover, but it also reminded her of daytime Draco. He was only hers at night. During the day, he was distant, like a stranger. They did not even share the closeness of roommates, though she had long since abandoned her own flat to live here instead.

"It's good." She lied and turned away, carrying her cup to the bathroom. She settled herself on the toilet, dizzy and weary, and took another sip of her coffee. Many mornings she ended up here, resting on the porcelain throne and wondering how this all happened. She was in a relationship that did not exist; she and Draco were not even unspoken: they were unknown. When she looked at him, she had more thoughts than she could count, but they were all too complex to understand. She was drunk off of him, but she was tired of being drunk otherwise. That was how they met, how they happened, but it no longer worked.

She was burning for him and because of him, and the path forward was clouded with a tequila haze.

X

He sat at the kitchen table, the Daily Prophet laid out before him, but he was not reading. The insides of his eyeballs throbbed from the effort of keeping them open and the pinpricks of light stabbing at his brain. Drinking with Astoria was a life and death experience; every time he saw her, he needed a drink so badly he started to shake. He was at a loss as to what to do with her, but without her seemed impossible. She was so beautiful in her sheet, stumbling in with drowsy eyes and bare feet.

Whenever he tried to tell himself it must end, he would close his eyes and see her standing there on the night he first _realized_ her. He had been picking her sister Daphne up for a date, a smart match that paired two pureblooded wizards, but when she had opened the door to greet him, he had spotted Astoria behind her. She had been standing there with a group of female friends, wearing sky-high stilettos and an emerald minidress. Her dark hair was spilling down her back, and she was laughing with her lips against a shotglass. Two years younger, a lifetime younger, she was breathtaking, untouched by the war and tragedy that had filled their lives. Too selfish and dumb to acknowledge the Great War, she had once described her younger self.

That was five years ago, and now they were living together, a pair of degenerate, debauched lovers who knew nothing about how to be together.

Draco took another drink of his terrible coffee and frowned at his cup. He had gotten the new kind, knowing Astoria hated strong java, to see how she would react. Not so long ago, she would have thrown the cup on the floor in a fit of rage and stalked back to bed, but this morning, she had politely sipped at it and retreated. She was softening in so many ways that he did not know who she was anymore. No longer was she the excessive girl, drinking all his liquor and living off his daddy's money and goading him into a rage until he wanted to shake her. She had a job, no more waiting at home for him with a bottle in hand, and she kept the apartment clean now until they had nights like last night.

He looked up at her bra dangling from the light fixture above his head and could not help a smile. At least some things never changed. He stood up and walked back to the bathroom and knocked.

"I am going out."

"Be safe."

They were like two ships passing in the day but meeting at night.

X

By the time night rolled around, he had poured two glasses of rich, dangerous tequila, stuck a wedge of lime on each, and settled down beside her on the couch. Her head was tilted back against the back of the sofa, hair spilling out in silky waves. He reached over to curl a strand around his finger and leaned down to brush a kiss across it. She turned to look at him with a radiant smile and knocked back a shot's worth of her tequila glass. The shot went down as smooth as water, and not even her eyes flinched. He chased her shot with one of his own. They drank like two beings made into one, sharing each other's intoxication. Tequila was the antidote to the poison they were to each other; or was it the other way around?

"You're beautiful…" He whispered to her neck's soft skin, dipping his mouth there to taste her. She turned that smile on him again and turned to kiss him. "So beautiful." They sat for a while in silence. Sometimes their hands would wander to touch knees, elbows, shoulders, intimate kisses that were far from sexual, and they drank their liquor until the colors of the world became softer and lines blurred. When their flat became the watercolor painting of their drunken vision, her head was resting on his shoulder and her eyes were tilted up to look at him, blue irises glowing in the dark.

He sensed that she was about to say something serious before her mouth opened, and he had the sudden horrible sense that something was about to shatter the hazy glass of their existence. His muscles tightened in anticipation, the nerves in his hands suddenly alive with the physical desire to stop whatever was about to come. "Draco, what are we?"

The question shocked him. No matter what he had tried to anticipate, he could never have predicted that question. It broke all the rules they had never spoken, and he recoiled as if disgusted at her betrayal. She reached over to press a finger to his lips, unharmed by his retreat, and whispered, "Think first."

He thought. Or rather, he tried to. He tried to think of what the answer to the question could be. They were lovers, drinking partners; those roles were clear. They did not need definition because they spoke for themselves. When they lay naked together, when they took shots together, those actions created the roles he knew of. But somehow, he knew that the answer hovering in front of him was the wrong answer to say. Her eyes were pleading with him. What other answer could he give though? Every other word was wrong, a label that did not do justice to the dynamic that quivered between him and this exquisite young woman beside him.

He imagined kicking her out, sending her out into the streets to fend for herself on her low-paying job, with her alcoholism and her impracticality. He would still be here, sitting in his apartment. Would he drink without her? Would he still drag himself into the office in the mornings feeling weak and drugged and drag himself home to find his strength in the bottle? _Or is my strength in her_… he wondered suddenly, frowning at her. He saw her misinterpret the frown, and he tried to turn it to a smile.

"We're… together." He said, trying to make it sound like a promise.

"I think we should get married." She dropped the bomb with such ease and calmness that he looked at her glass and her liquid courage. He was not shocked by this statement. It had been haunting the small apartment they shared for weeks. Mumbled to the bedsheets, unspoken in the kitchen, whispered longingly to the door as it closed, the words had shadowed him around his home. Of course, she wanted to get married. That was what the softening was for. She was preparing to give up their beautiful, torturous, horrible, wonderful, youthful state and become real, solid, predictable. He was losing her this way; this was a way he could stand. He just could not lose her to her questioning their _now_, questioning their existence now in all its inexplicability.

He felt like he was trying to clutch sand in his fingers as it raced through on its way to the ocean. Each grain that hit the water was swept away where he could never get it again. He could already never get back the intemperate angel who would rub his feet one second and spit in his face the next, the hellcat who kissed him and coddled him all before she flew into a rage and broke his wand in half. She had already become an adult, a woman who was losing all traces the child he had met. If he married her, he would lose her. If he refused, he would lose her.

"Why?"

X

She needed an answer quickly, something snappy and quick and so charming it would make him immediately say yes. Yes would give her what she believed she wanted, permanence, his time during the day not just the night. She looked at his beautiful face, and then looked at her glass, too low for a conversation this serious. The tequila was making her tongue loose but her thoughts slippery. The why suddenly seemed impossible to explain, like it did not even exist as a cohesive being but as many different strands of yarn impossible to knit together at a moment's notice. The only reason she could think to offer was forbidden.

"I love you." The three words that should never have been allowed tumbled out all on their own even as her slippery thoughts tried to stop them. But oddly, this time, Draco did not recoil as he had to her first forbidden statement. He looked thoughtful, and she tried to squash the sudden bubbling of hope she felt in her chest. Had he been watching her change and seeing her through new eyes as she worked so hard to grow up? She had gotten a job, given up her shortest skirts and lowest tops, and bitten her tongue when the fits of rage boiled up inside of her and made her want to claw him like a wild animal. She had tried to grow, to learn, to be better. Had it counted for something? Was she more than just his bender's best girl?

"Is that what this is?" He reached out to her again, held out his hand to pull her back into his chest. He was alcohol hot against her skin, and she looked up to him, pressed her hand against him, wanted to kiss him and touch him and speak without words. "Is that what this burning need for you is? Do I love you? Do you love me?"

"Yes." She said. "Yes. Yes. Yes." She reached down for her glass and raised it as if toasting him before downing a shot. She did not grimace; instead she smiled and repeated. "Yes. This is love. It's not like the fairy tales. It's an addiction just like alcoholism. An addiction to a person. We've been fighting one addiction and embracing another." She looked at her glass through her blurred, softened vision. It sloshed against the sides as her hand shook ever so slightly.

"You think we're addicted to alcohol and one another?" He whispered, his lips against her hair now, tickling her as the strands vibrated softly under his deep voice.

"Fighting one addiction and embracing another," she repeated in confirmation. He paused, looking at her. His eyes became serious, looking straight through her it seemed, looking forward to their future. She wondered what he was thinking as he reached forward toward the table. His hand folded and unfolded twice on its brief journey forward, as if nervous, and then curled itself around his glass. He took a long, hard swallow of tequila. Then he grimaced, looked into his cup as if it were tea leaves, and dumped it out on the carpet.

"Let's fight one addiction and embrace another, Astoria," he said slowly, picking up her hand and brushing a kiss across it.

"Draco… what are you saying?"

"I think we should get married," he whispered against her hand. She smiled, a strange watery smile, and leaned in to kiss him. He tasted like tequila and a dangerous promise, and she prayed it was a promise he meant to keep. They were lovers, drinking partners, and soon, if promises and endearments whispered through intoxication meant anything, they would be husband and wife. She, too, overturned her glass of tequila and watched the poison splash onto the floor.

That night, later, no more shots downed and much sex had, she looked down at him, asleep on the pillow, face smashed inelegantly against the cloth. The first tickings of the headache that would haunt her in the morning were already on the way, and the first pangs of fear at what her drunken rambling had created were stabbing at her stomach. She was going to be Mrs. Astoria Malfoy. She was going to have a new life, defined, no longer stretched out in a tequila haze. She had no idea what to think. He was still the man of her nightmares, not just her dreams. What was this life she had made?

If only she could have known that at that moment, Draco was dreaming of her, not as a wife or a lover or a drinking partner but simply as a person. She was it. If only she could have known that, her nervous fingers would not have to fidget at her side and curse the sobriety that had descended upon her.

She murmured to the velvety darkness of the bedroom, reaching down to brush her fingers across his: "You and tequila make me crazy."


End file.
